Hi peeps, pardon me if this topic is old.

Was wondering how many genuine players we have in this country, and want to brainstorm on the potential and feasibility of having a XBOX Official Community endorsed/supported by Microsoft Malaysia in near future.

Or did I miss the fact that this is happening already?

Piracy is probably the ultimate negative factor for this to become possible.

Any comments are welcome. Don't take it personal please.

This topic is old, it has been discussed before

Until it actually happened, there's nothing much to add anymore

Oops, sorry. I'll search it, appreciate if someone could show me the way.

There arent any xbox malaysia because xbox never actually exist in Malaysia. SOme rumor said because of piracy, and I dont see any piracy will affect Xbox being in Malaysia. In my opinion because we got sucky line. Xbox always about standard, if something arent meet Microsoft standard they wont make it available.

I m pretty sure its because of legal matters. PSN took sometime to solve legal issues with malaysian law. Also i think MS did do some survey regarding to the product sales in malaysia, and i believe it turn out bad.

As for the hardware, it's better for MS to introduce xbox to us local buyers when the next gen version is made available. Hype is important too for a sucessful product launch (aside from specifications of course)

As for the online experience, it's somewhat unacceptable for most as for the XBL subscription price. Although it's the gold standard in online gaming, it's still pretty limited on other online parts (no internet browser as some may expect, although i can't see why i'd want to do that on my big screen). Plus there are no video services / IPTV for our region (except the upcoming YouTube) that makes a lot can't swallow that kind of price.

So i'd say they can have a better response if:
1. They are going to sell next-gen hardware, as malaysians are such blind spec junkie.
2. Slash the price on Gold, or at least bundle one-year Gold with the launch year purchase.

Btw, i can't see the piracy as the sole issue, as there are other countries in XBL that got rampant piracy issue and yet they are present in the XBL list.
What I can only think is that it has something to do with shitty internet connection, with lots of internet outage. MS knows that people paying for their Gold are expecting to have consistent online experience. And they should really know that as they have previously partnered with lots of ISP in America on Windows 98 (which turns out not so well), not counting all the fiasco of WebTV.

Thanks for fruitful feedback. Indeed all comments are valid, at the moment we can sum down the major concerns to(no sequential order):

1) Low Market Penetration, slow product take up rate - Current generation(XBOX360) seems like fell into a bad cycle trap - "not popular, poor sales: poor sales, not popular"

2) Quality and performance of broadband - Unifi availability may be the best answer yet

3) Legal issues - but why?

I do agree the best bet is to revamp the whole portfolio/scenario for next-gen product:

better product + improved network infrastructure + better XBL integration + stronger sales network & marketing support

Ultimately, it's a two way effort with Microsoft XBOX team. If they don't hear the customer enough, with so many other challenging factors, chances are they'll just ignore the market, take the easy way out.

If I must compare with SG, other than broadband infra., I can't think of other reason why we're far behind.

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Added on October 12, 2011, 4:57 pmI'm not sure what efforts has been done by other members, to lift up the baseline of the potentials, will dig up old threads to read more on previous discussion.

If you're keen, there's so much things we can do to get heard. After all, to begin is the toughest.

This post has been edited by Heislyc: Oct 12 2011, 04:57 PM

Trust me...pls dont take serious about this matter unless u r related to bill gates or steve ballmer.
Till then...keep dreaming and keep using the vpn to download some dlc....

* Low Market Penetration due to ZERO marketing, since it's not even marketed here. All are parallel import.
* The console are popular enough (quite a feat for sales without any official support), but it's really the Sales of Game Titles that generate income for MS (since the console's price are actually subsidized). Unfortunately, for retailers here to really drive the sale of their console, they went extra mile to mod their console so people can play pirated games (typical PC guy mentality of us asians). Retailers got no choice since they just want to sell their consoles with nil support by MS (yet).

.

* ...Thus it may take time. A very long time. People don't just get unifi in their home by snapping their finger and shout "Unifi!".
* High speed broadband penetration isn't extensive enough currently. Even the normal speed broadband penetration is sad enough in our country.
* Prohibitive price in current economy condition might just add the insult.
* Outages, outages, outages. MS knows that shouldn't be their fault. But since their device, or more importantly their Gold service is marketed for the connected market, they know every cents count from subscriber's whole subscription per year. This may lead to racking up of tech support calls, which is expensive to maintain.

.

* I'm no expert on that, but it's maybe due to restrictive trademarks, brand names. etc (Eg: some stuff/brand in-game are only licensed for games released on certain countries, and some game titles which may have its name already used up by another entity in another country requires licensing).
* Maybe board certification, just like how censorship and classification is being run. Just a guess.

.

For it to work,

a) XBL doesn't need better integration (other than what has already planned on its roadmap). It just need to be FAR cheaper, since it got smaller set of features than US/Europe counterpart (no IPTV/planned IPTV, no Zune Marketplace, no Netflix/Hulu, etc.). Better yet, bundle one year free gold with selected xbox model on official launch to gain traction. Or of course they can play the Apple card by making the online service F.O.C.

b) Revised hardware with next-gen internal. A whole new hardware revamp will grant them a better start (like what u've said).

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Added on October 12, 2011, 5:46 pmyup.

This post has been edited by thisisit: Oct 12 2011, 05:46 PM

Its pointless to enjoy the official status, if your security keeps gettin hacked over n over again- yup, its true-ps online security had been breached again - http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/12/sonys-on...ts-compromised/

legal issues are

1. copyright
2. business plan
3. government tax and legal tax

thats what i can think off. of course this not the main reason

It is always related to business decision, and the siza of microsoft office in Malaysia compared to even the newly established off in Malaysia like Googles is so pathetic small. I guess those Microsoft representatives in Spore r giving lots of negative remarks to justify the official existence of xbox in Msia....as it surely jeopardise the business potential of those Singaporean distributors....'nuff said.

A dozens of tough nuts to crack huh...

Am grateful for your replies. So far I've nothing much to add, I think I'll pull some strings to get insider feedback on this suppressing matter.

To certain extend, maybe silencer is right, dudes in Sg may have contributed to this "infertility".

Please don't try to get XBOX Live official here.

MS always try to play nice with the local regional rule systems.

Imagine all content having to pass through Malaysian Censorship Board. You REALLY want that?

We have yet to know that for sure, put it this way, I don't think Singapore Board is so open about game violence etc. It may or may not be the utmost trouble here(content censorship).

However all Peg18 games manage to sneak through and distribute easily

If no one goes and alerts the idoits in charge that content is coming in. No one would care.

Problem is that MS being a corporate entity is obligated to follow rules and procedures.

In garage sales i saw some1 selling malaysia xbox set with 1 year warranty which distributed by ingram micro...

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2067066

Guess that it is Ingram Micro, Singapore

its ingram micro singapore, not malaysia

Yalor i thought so too.